Monthly Archives: January 2012

The trouble with fighting for human freedom is that one spends most of one’s time defending scoundrels. For it is against scoundrels that oppressive laws are first aimed, and oppression must be stopped at the beginning if it is to … Continue reading →

As I discussed in a recent post, we need to be sure what caused the Great Recession if we are to decide upon the best means to return to a growing economy and reduce unemployment. In this light, it’s worth … Continue reading →

I’m excited to hear of an upcoming Spanish documentary giving an Austrian explanation for the Great Recession (as we seem to be calling it now). It looks to be in the same vein as Overdose which I highlighted last year. I … Continue reading →

What do we mean by democracy? How do we define capitalism or socialism? Part of the challenge when discussing these ideas is that we all have different definitions of the ideas themselves. CS Lewis complained about certain words losing their meaning, and … Continue reading →

The aim shouldn’t be to preserve the status quo, but to find ways to allow banks to fail without exposing the general public to the fall-out. Anthony Evans, of the Cobden Centre amongst other organisations. If western governments had taken … Continue reading →

Longrider sums up the latest set of made up statistics regarding drinking problems: If you drown, it counts as 0.34 of an alcohol-related admission – though most people unlucky enough to drown aren’t admitted to hospital. Getting chilled to the … Continue reading →

I’ve previously presented thoughts on the causes of recessions, the bust part of ‘boom and bust’. Understanding the causes of recessions is crucial in order to help prevent them, and to return to growth. The mainstream Keynesian view (named after … Continue reading →

There is no means of avoiding a final collapse of a boom brought about by credit expansion. The alternative is only whether the crisis should come sooner as a result of a voluntary abandonment of further credit expansion or later as a final and total catastrophe of the currency system involved.

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"Like every other tax, inflation acts to determine the individual and
business policies we are all forced to follow. It discourages all prudence
and thrift. It encourages squandering, gambling, reckless waste
of all kinds. It often makes it more profitable to speculate than to produce.
It tears apart the whole fabric of stable economic relationships.
Its inexcusable injustices drive men toward desperate remedies. It
plants the seeds of fascism and communism. It leads men to demand
totalitarian controls. It ends invariably in bitter disillusion and collapse."

Henry Hazlitt, Economics in One Lesson

"But who can enforce honest weights and measures
regarding money if the enforcers—politicians and rulers—
are profiting from the cheating? That is the problem
that no society has ever been able to solve. Government
money eventually becomes corrupt money."

Gary North, Honest Money

"As a result I am more convinced than ever that if we ever again are going to have a decent money, it will not come from government: it will be issued by private enterprise, because providing the public with good money which it can trust and use can not only be an extremely profitable business; it imposes on the issuer a discipline to which the government has never been and cannot be subject. It is a business which competing enterprise can maintain only if it gives the public as good a money as anybody else."

FA Hayek, A Free-Market Monetary System

"By a continuous process of inflation, governments can confiscate, secretly and unobserved, an important part of the wealth of their citizens. By this method, they not only confiscate, but they confiscate arbitrarily; and while the process impoverishes many, it actually enriches some."